In a foreign country at the end of my marriage, I traveled nomadically for 11 months staying in 24 places throughout Holland, Portugal, Canada, USA, Brazil and Argentina before buying a home.

It made such an impression on me that I intentionally set out on a second nomadic trip to further explore the concepts of mobility, simplicity, and perspective. While doing my graduate degree, I camped in 30 places in 55 weeks. Now I host urban nomads through the Couchsurfing Project.

01 January 2007

Speaking to Me

Oh, Missy, thank you! Pandora.com is wonderful! I now have over 25 stations.

When I typed in Cat Empire, the message said, "Searching the Music Genome Project..."

Then, "We're now creating a station that will explore songs and artists that have musical qualities similar to Cat Empire."

"To start things off, we'll play a song that exemplifies the musical style of Cat Empire which features mild rhythmic syncopation, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, a busy horn section, major key tonality, classical rhodes sound and many other similarities identified in the Music Genome Project."

I considered memorizing this to use as an answer the next time someone asks me, "What kind of music do you like?"

I started plugging in the musicians from the list that Ashley, my sixth couchsurfer, left me.

Ashley is a ballerina who used the CouchSurfing Project as she traveled around Europe trying out for dance companies.

Ashley wrote on my list, "Sigur Ros," saying that they were Icelandic.

She said, "If fairies could have bands, it would be like this."

I wonder how this will be represented in the Music Genome Project, if they have enough songs and artists with this quality to create a whole station.

She had let me listen to Arcade Fire's song, Bell Orchestre, on her MP3 player.

As I enter the name, I hope the typewriter they play in that song shows up as a musical gene.

Instead of busy horn section, I want them to say mellow office machines, but they don't.

I love Pandora.com. I listen to it all the time and have friends type in a favorite artist when they're here.

As I listen, I am still wondering what it is exactly that speaks to me in a song? Will I like all of the music with similar gene patterns? Or are there other unrepresented qualities that might resonate with me?

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About Me

I want mobility:Get-up-and-go in the global village. Navigation to other vantage points. What does the world look like from there? Is there room to move? Or am I tied down to my stuff?

I want simplicity:Real needs and wants are fewer than they sometimes seem. 'Accumulation' is as inevitable as death and taxes. Can I prune back the attention-stealing stuff to give space to the useful and meaningful things?

I want perspective:
Understanding of how multi-faceted life is. Consideration of options. Is the world getting smaller? Or is MY WORLD getting smaller? How many viewpoints have I seen so far? Is there a 'road less traveled' or a million billion different roads? Can I 'get out of the woods' and look for multiple angles?